I opened up with: it’s not that people like Jon Stewart believes unconditional surrender wasn’t the only option. They just believe killing less people, the necessity of killing those people, wasn’t really necessary for unconditional surrender.

Strangely, this lead to some off the hand research on the era in question: WWII Japan. I will place some of the most interesting material here, but the dialogue is in the link above. If you are interested in a discussion of the historical context behind the decisions to nuke and reconstruct Japan, then you should check it out.

4) In his memoirs General Douglas MacArthur wrote about his first meeting with Emperor Hirohito after the end of the Second World War.

Shortly after my arrival in Tokyo, I was urged by members of my staff to summon the Emperor to my headquarters as a show of power. I brushed the suggestions aside. “To do so,” I explained, “would be to outrage the feelings of the Japanese people and make a martyr of the Emperor in their eyes.

No, I shall wait and in time the Emperor will voluntarily come to see me. In this case, the patience of the East rather than the haste of the West will best serve our purpose.”

The Emperor did indeed shortly request an interview. In cutaway, striped trousers, and top hat, riding in his Daimler with the imperial grand chamberlain facing him on the jump seat, Hirohito arrived at the embassy. I had, from the start of the occupation, directed that there should be no derogation in his treatment. Every honor due a sovereign was to be his. I met him cordially, and recalled that I had at one time been received by his father at the close of the Russo-Japanese War. He was nervous and the stress of the past months showed plainly. I dismissed everyone but his own interpreter, and we sat down before an open fire at one end of the long reception hall.

I offered him an American cigarette, which he took with thanks. I noticed how his hands shook as I lighted it for him. I tried to make it as easy for him as I could, but I knew how deep and dreadful must be his agony of humiliation. I had an uneasy feeling he might plead his own cause against indictment as a war criminal. There had been considerable outcry from some of the Allies, notably the Russians and the British, to include him in this category. Indeed, the initial list of those proposed by them was headed by the Emperor’s name. Realizing the tragic consequences that would follow such an unjust action, I had stoutly resisted such efforts. When Washington seemed to be veering toward the British point of view, I had advised that I would need at least one million reinforcements should such action be taken. I believed that if the Emperor were indicted, and perhaps hanged, as a war criminal, military government would have to be instituted throughout all Japan, and guerrilla warfare would probably break out. The Emperor’s name had then been stricken from the list. But of all this he knew nothing.

But my fears were groundless. What he said was this: “I come to you, General MacArthur, to offer myself to the judgment of the powers you represent as the one to bear sole responsibility for every political and military decision made and action taken by my people in the conduct of war.” A tremendous impression swept me. This courageous assumption of a responsibility implicit with death, a responsibility clearly belied by facts of which I was fully aware, moved me to the very marrow of my bones. He was an – Emperor by inherent birth, but in that instant I knew I faced the First Gentleman of Japan in his own right.

This is, of course, MacArthur the infamous ‘warmonger’. It was the first sign, one of many, to me that history wasn’t always the way it was portrayed once you started reading the views and biases of historians: people who naturally distort the primary documents in a fashion consistent with their biases or their research methodologies. That, of course, linked up with Ayers, Alinsky, and the “Long March Through The Institutions”, which culminated in the Age of Obama.